Vancouver
Dan Bouchard's parents had good reason to worry when their grown son suddenly disappeared. These are strange times in Vancouver, and paranoia may have played a factor in the panic generated when Mr Bouchard took off on June 9 from his home in White Rock without telling anyone.
'I had a little bit of a breakdown,' he said last week after re-emerging from his 'time out'. 'I had to get away for a while. It was very irresponsible of me.'
As his parents looked on tearful and relieved, he told a press conference that he should not have disappeared, leading to panic and a rather costly bill for search efforts.
Online, 1,500 people joined a Facebook site set up to help find Mr Bouchard. Many of them reacted ferociously when it was revealed the young man had taken off to Mexico without telling his family - for some time away from people he knew.
The whole situation was embarrassing, said Mr Bouchard, but there was one bright side: his disappearance has drawn attention to what has been until now individual cases of missing people.
A Vancouver Courier reporter gathered data over the past few years and found a significant number of disappearances - nearly 30 men, all healthy and young, and with no apparent reason.